The New Year is well away, and for many that meant making a resolution in January. Often this can be wanting to get fit or do more exercise - have you managed to stick to your goal? Where does this even come from?

Maybe we’ve overindulged over the Christmas period and feel guilty, perhaps our clothes are starting to get tight, or close family members have made a few comments about our ‘weight’. In the UK and across the world, the advice from government is that we ‘should’ be doing at least 150 minutes of cardiovascular exercise each week, however for many that is simply not being achieved, but why?

Is it because simply the mention of the word ‘exercise’ makes us recoil and run fast to the biscuit tin rather than 5km on the treadmill? Given how important we know physical activity is for a healthy body and brain, it is crucial to investigate this barrier that so many of us experience.

Is ‘exercise’ a dirty word? Let’s see if we can try and understand this….

In psychology, weight-related stigma, fear of discrimination in an exercising setting, or simply feeling like we don’t belong, could explain this phenomena. We exclude ourselves from sports and activities, even when we actually enjoy them.

A possible reason why we feel an obstacle to exercise, is because we set unrealistic goals. When we expect too much of ourselves, we often fall short, not because we don’t try hard enough, but due to the vast amount of change we are experiencing. In Psychology, the mental capacity we have for behaviour change is referred to as ‘cognitive load’. With limited resources for forming new habits, we need to consider how feasible our exercise goals are.

Research by Lally et al. (2009), found that forming a new habit can take anywhere between 18-254 days varying by individual. So we might suggest that if we challenge ourselves to become avid gym or spin class goers in a particularly short period of time, we may well feel as if we have failed. This is explained by our limited cognitive load.

It is within our nature to mentally form associations between things in our environment and emotions, referred to as Classical Conditioning (Pavlov, 1986). When we feel as if we have failed to live up to our goals, we learn to associate our feelings, may they be disappointment, self-doubt or hopelessness with the event experienced-in our case, exercise. By this point, our knowledge of what exercise means and how we feel about ourselves, referred to as a mental ‘schema’ and ‘self-schema’ in Psychology respectively, are governed by these negative, emotional experiences.

Forming these maladaptive schemas may be a contributing factor towards why we struggle to stick with our exercise plans, as supported by (Höpfener & Keith, 2021), who found that participants who failed at high- set goals showed a decrease in mood, self- esteem and motivation towards exercise. Therefore unrealistic goal setting along with various psychological processes, may begin to explain how we form negative associations with exercise and subsequently struggle to adhere to it. 

Aside from our personal experiences, these schemas may also be fed into by external weight stigma and ideals of attractiveness from society. This idea is suggested by Vartanian and Shaprow (2008) who showed that young women (aged 18-25) who felt they had experienced weight stigma expressed: avoidance, fear of judgment, lack of motivation and self- consciousness with regards to exercising. They also found that those who highly internalised these societal attitudes were predominantly motivated to exercise for social approval.

This evidence suggests that weight stigma has a negative impact on exercise motivations heightened in those susceptible to social attitudes. Therefore, it is easy to recognise how the attitudes and pressures we feel from society may also contribute towards our drive to avoid exercise, especially in public settings.

So what can we suggest in terms of how to fight these external pressures and maladaptive thought processes? Firstly, it is important to remind ourselves why we feel the way we do. Appreciating how our minds learn, may help us to not be so hard on ourselves and allow us to build self- compassion. Remembering that the most effective way of approaching this is to be realistic and patient with our goal setting, taking note of every positive step we have taken so far.

To help reintegrate ourselves back into exercise and sport, we suggest trying new forms of physical activity until you discover something you really love! Or even make it social and try a new activity with friends to build a supportive and non-judgemental community. Whatever it is, there is a sport or exercise style out there for you, and remembering that everyone else is in the same boat will help you to find it. 

If you would like to know more about how Invigorise’s ‘Nourish Me’ programme can help you with the psychological tools to achieve your exercise and fitness goals, then please get in touch today!